DOCUMENTARY ANIMATION OR ANIMATED DOCUMENTARY? Reflections on the history and the current situation on the example of Poland and other countries

Documentary animation is a hybrid cinematic form, the history of which goes back over 100 years. Earlier such films were rather a rarity, while lately they appear on screens more and more often. Using numerous examples, the article discusses the goals of artists turning to this unusual and controversial practice. The main thematic blocks are highlighted, the boundaries between the fictional artistic world and the real basis of a film are determined. The author also attempts to distinguish between animated documentary and “full-fledged” documentary animation. After reviewing the genesis (films by W. McCay, J. and F. Hubley) and films that have become modern classics of the direction (Waltz with Bashir, Crulic: The Path to Beyond etc.), the most notable modern samples—primarily those filmed in Poland and in Russia, where animadoc is rapidly gaining momentum—were analyzed in detail. Directors use this form when talking about historical events (reconstruction), ambiguous personalities and unusual places, as well as about their own or others’ internal problems and experiences. Documentary animation is becoming a common means of (auto)psychotherapy and fits into the current trend of pronouncing taboo topics and working out hidden traumas. Animation allows to penetrate deeply into the world of characters without violating their personal boundaries. An important place is held by metafilms, reflecting on the language of the animadoc and cinema in general. Today, documentary with the use of animation is more common than “real” animadoc, although the line between the fictional artistic world and the actual basis of films is rather fluid. The phenomenon is still in the making. Nevertheless, such films must have a real component: interviews (usually off-screen), newsreels, photographs, genuine objects, etc. The factual basis is not a sufficient argument to classify the work as a documentary animation—the decisive factor here is the hybridization of the form.

NAMELESS STAR: EDISON DENISOV’S MUSIC IN THE DISCOURSES OF AN UNORDINARY STORY

The article addresses the 1978 film Nameless Star (directed by Mikhail Kozakov, music by Edison Denisov) as one of the few examples of on-screen art in which music not only supports the story, but comes to the fore, becoming one of its characters. Naturally enough, in this article, Nameless Star is considered through the lens of its musical concept. The focus is on some of the composer’s individual features that characterize his film music. Among the main ones is Denisov’s fundamental idea about integrating music into a single canvas of a film work, which directly affects its figurative and stylistic characteristics and poetics in general. In this vein, the author analyzes various interpretations of the plot (or, rather, plotlines—the encounters of the main characters, the discovery of a new star, etc.), which have significant divergences in the texts of different authors and direct participants in the filming process; the main semantic points highlighted in the film by keywords (“station”, “diesel-electric locomotive”, etc.); and, finally, the film’s sound and musical design shaping a single line of storytelling. The special role of sound elements (train noise, station bell, etc.) accompanying the narration and endowing it with special thoroughness and authenticity is revealed. It is noted that the dramatic center of the film is an impromptu performance of the Symphony composed by one of the main characters—Mr. Udrea, music teacher. The significance of this artwork in the context of the narration is extremely high: decisive plot turns are associated with the Symphony; it combines intonations and leitmotifs that determine the overall emotional tone of the film. Edison Denisov manages to reproduce Udrea’s intention to the finest detail, creating a nuanced intonation-thematic profile of the Symphony, thanks to, among other things, skillful timbre-rhythmic differentiation. Over and above, he structures musical drama in such a way that during performance of the Symphony, the semantic dominants of the film, embodied in the system of its main sound images, get actualized (theme of the city, Mona’s theme, etc.). In a sense, the music here goes beyond being a mere soundtrack: it becomes an integral part of the plot, penetrating into the words of the heroes (recurring mentioning of the English horn or the story about the structure of the Symphony). Largely thanks to the music, which brings new implications to the film, the romantic comedy appears as a complex, multiplanar work, revealing an unordinary facet in the creative gift of one of the most convinced avant-garde composers of the 20th century.

“THE SEAMY SIDE OF THE CITY”: MARGINAL LANDSCAPES AND CONTEMPORARY VISUAL CULTURE

The topic of people thrown to the sidelines of life is considered in a double frame—in the context of the way the urban space is arranged and in the context of modern visual culture (feature films, video and photo blogs, videos on popular YouTube channels). The most hyped-up type of marginal landscape in modern media is slums. The otherness of such spaces has always been a subject of interest and curiosity, for “gazing”—interpretation, perception and entertainment. In modern mass culture, the “location” of the global south slums is especially trendy. In such exterior, hyper-popular feature films such as Slumdog Millionaire have been shot, causing a new cultural phenomenon—mass slum tourism. This phenomenon seems to be ambiguous from an ethical point of view; but from the point of view of visual culture, it is voyeurism brought to the level of an art and everyday life practice. The second type of marginal urban landscapes is local “invasion” into the decent and institutionalized city space. This art form serves as a “location” for a psychological drama of superfluous people. Features of national identity are most clearly manifested on its seamy side rather than anywhere else. Japanese townships of the homeless, incorporated into central and well-to-do areas, are no strangers to order and aesthetics; while Russian realities—chaos, departure from norms and underground—are completely opposite. Classic films devoted to this issue—Dodes’ka-den by Akira Kurasawa, Promised Heaven by Eldar Ryazanov, The Lady in the Van by Nicholas Hytner—model these seamy spaces and their peculiarities inherent in national culture. Very popular now are YouTube channels about the life of homeless people, which show real characters in their real habitats, introducing marginal spaces into the rank of a hot-topic visual culture. This type of visualization provokes another cultural phenomenon— the perception of marginal loci and their inhabitants as an interactive performance. Interactivity can vary from attacking to fraternization, from preaching to charity. Odd as it may seem, hyper-visualization and aestheticization of social ulcers contributes to their social invisibility. It is a problem, which no one is going to solve anymore; it has become a part of modern culture with its own philosophical and aesthetic arguments—and in a certain sense they act as its justification.

“EVERY GENERATION HAS ITS SHERLOCK”: THE CHARACTER’S IMAGE IN THE FILM ADAPTATIONS OF STORIES BY A. CONAN DOYLE ABOUT SHERLOCK HOLMES

The article covers the problem of the protagonist’s image portrayal in modern cinema on the example of the three most recent film adaptations based on works by Conan Doyle. The relevance of this scientific issue is explained by the fact that the peculiarities of representing the character in modern cinema partly reflect the state of society itself, its social problems, phobias and neuroses. Cinematography, like no other type of contemporary art, has broad opportunities to embody almost any character in three-dimensional reality, which imposes a certain social responsibility for the results of the main characters’ portrayal. The appeal to the archetypal images of world literature implies not only the openness of improvisation, but also the preservation of the character’s social function. The article analyzes the representation of one of such archetypal images of world significance—Sherlock Holmes. The research methodology is based on a systematic approach and general scientific methods, and also includes special methods: content analysis of scientific literature related to the topic; the method of sociological survey (questionnaire survey), the method of statistical analysis. The empirical study, the results of which are presented in this article, is based on three screen adaptations of the Sherlock Holmes stories, produced in the 2000s in Great Britain, Russia and the United States. The study involved 150 respondents, whose answers were converted from a qualitative to a quantitative format to analyze the specifics of the representation of the main character (the protagonist). The authors of the article came to the following conclusions: in modern film adaptations the protagonist is portrayed not as a genius of the scientific method of thinking, but as a sociopath who is unable to interact with society without an intermediary (a companion character). Moreover, modern screen adaptations violate the archetypal image itself due to improvisations with the static characteristics of the character, which leads to a negative perception of such a character by the audience. The very strengthening of sociopathic features of the protagonist’s character, shifting the emphasis from the idea of higher justice, from eternal values to private motives, lead to a certain simplification of the character, and also serve as an indicator of the state of society itself. The theoretical significance of the research is determined by the fact that this article offers original criteria developed by the authors to analyze the representation of the character. The practical significance of the article is backed by the conclusions and results of the study, which can be used for further work to identify the impact of characters’ representations on shaping value orientations in modern society.

METAMORPHOSES OF THE CINEMA CLUB MOVEMENT

The article is based on the studies by the Department for the Development and Approbation of Film Education Methods (VGIK) in the field of amateur film associations and cinema clubs. The authors profile the history of the Russian film club movement and analyze the significance of such associations for cultural enlightenment and comprehensive education of a personality. Such a survey is included in the international process of the formation of a cinephile community, who in the USSR were called nothing short of “kinomany” (movie addicts). A hundred years of experience of Russian film education, in the forms of both spontaneous amateur one and complex state one, is considered as a source of methods and best practices to be implemented in modern media education. The article also explains the influence of film clubs and their repertoire on the distribution and popularization of cinema works, especially on the so-called festival and “shelved” films, limited in release then and now becoming a battleground between commercial and artistic priorities of the filming process. The text contains stories and descriptions of participants in the film club movement: the founders of associations, curators and critics. Their interviews make it possible to imagine a three-dimensional picture of the life of cinema lovers’ communities. The main milestones in the history of the film club movement in the USSR and in the world are traced: the formation in the 1910s–1920s, the decline in the 1930s–1940s, the revival of the international festival movement abroad after World War II, and in Russia—during the perestroika, the crisis of the 1980s–1990s, the creation of the Cinema Club Federation, attempts to revive the Friends of Soviet Cinema Society, and modern trends related to the film club work in the context of international cooperation, which was initiated by the VI World Festival of Youth and Students. The Soviet experience is studied in correlation not only with the strengthening in Western Europe of such phenomena as film clubs and film lovers’ associations, but also with the formation of specialized art cinemas and the experiment of the cinema club network, which is predicted to play a special role in the post-pandemic era. Among other things, the authors’ attention is focused on the delicate balance, that accompanied the entire history of the film club movement: the balance between initiative of the people, a spontaneous mass movement, and state efforts to organize and structure this process, between the desire for creative freedom and strict censorship of the elite. The authors consider the domestic and foreign cinema club experience as an opportunity to distribute works of the Russian cinema art among the most interested audience and to establish a system of limited cinema club distribution, which would bring originators and the public closer together.

THE FIRST SCREENING OF ALICE IN WONDERLAND (1903)

The article is dedicated to the British silent film Alice in Wonderland by Percy Stow and Cecil Hepworth, which was found and restored in 2010. The 12-minute film was unusually long for early cinema. Almost all of the survived credits annotate several short scenes at once, showing their interconnection or, conversely, apartness from each other. This suggests that some scenes were sold not separately, but as a series of scenes united by a credit. Structurally, each fragment of the film, consisting of 2–3 scenes, is similar to one episode of series. Therefore, the origin of the principles of seriality in cinema can be associated with film adaptations of fairy-tale stories. The concept of space demonstrates the inner duality of the Wonderland. The private part of it looks like an English landscape garden, while the space of the Queen and her entourage is designed as a classicist regular park. In his adaptation (2010) of Carroll’s fairy-tale, Tim Burton will further unfold the theme of duality and conflict inside the Wonderland. In the 1903 film adaptation, Alice was played by May Clark, a grown-up girl who worked at the Hepworth studio. The dreamlike nature of the screen reality is emphasized by the restraint of the amateur performers’ play and the unobtrusiveness of the fantastic, when the screen fantasy world is both similar and different from the everyday life. The marriageable age of the heroine and some of the scenes that look like Alice’s “going through the torments” make us interpret the action as the embodiment of her unconscious. The magic garden, where a young girl is so eager to get, a symbol of the desirable joys of an adult life, becomes a nightmare for Alice. The film was released in the same year as the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) was established, and it merged into an era of revision of Victorian ideals and rejection of the perception of women in line with patriarchal values. Tim Burton’s film, created in the era of the new emancipation and reconsideration of gender, largely corresponds to the first screen adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, presenting the Victorian world as a generalized image of a society that suppresses the individual and naturally provokes protest.

LUMINO KINETIC ART BY FRANK MALINA IN THE DISCOURSE SPACE OF SCREEN CULTURE

The article studies the work of Frank Joseph Malina (1912–1981), scientist, rocket engineer and artist, within the discourse space of screen culture. Modern screen science aims to explore the broad intermedia connections and cultural contexts associated with analyzing the technological, informational, and communicative features of digital screen surfaces, as well as determining their influence on the human cognitive and sensory apparatus. Technological art can be perceived as one of the discourses of media archaeology, within which the topoi of modern screen forms are identified and aestheticized. The prospects of research within the declared discourse field are associated with the fact that the creative response to intensive scientific and technological development concentrated on the key problems of the changing system of cultural communications. The screen as a boundary, as a window into the reality of representation, as a place for the “assembly” of corporal and sensory response to interaction with the information space—these and other meanings were addressed by envoys of technological art. Curiosity about the work of F. Malina in the context of screen culture is associated with his lumino kinetic experiments. They were aimed at the artistic mastering of the world standing on the verge of entering the digital virtual space. The article emphasizes that at the heart of his research was a screen form in which light fluxes gathered together thanks to electromechanical systems; in which light radiation came into contact with the human eye and body. Through his art, Malina explores the possibilities and limits of human perception, inevitably changing in the era of intensive scientific and technological development. The directions of his exploration testify to the discourse modeling of the modern computer screen. They can be taken as harbingers of the cultural communications of the digital age.

IMMERSIVE TECHNOLOGIES OF J. VAL DEL OMAR’S MEDIA ART (“APANORAMIC IMAGE OVERFLOW”, “DIAPHONY”, “TACTILE VISION”) AS AN EXPRESSION OF HIS CONCEPT OF “MECHANICAL MYSTICISM”

The article analyzes three media technologies for creating an immersive polysensory environment, developed back in 1940–1960s by the Spanish film director and engineer Jose Val del Omar. The technologies are considered in the context of the director’s key concept, which he called “mechanical mysticism”. It was aimed at creating a cinematic analogy of mystical experience by transforming the mysticism of Spanish culture into cinematic technologies. The author reveals how the conversion of the suggestive artistic potential of Spanish mysticism into the immersiveness of film technologies allowed J. Val del Omar to create art spaces that took the system of illusions beyond the visual into special modes of psychological experiences. On the example of his films (Water- Mirror of Granada, 1955, and Fire in Castile, 1961), the author analyzes the originality of the engineering solutions of J. Val del Omar’s technologies, defines the strategies of immersiveness and their rootedness in Spanish mysticism, qualifies the aesthetic impact of these media technologies on viewers. The article demonstrates that immersiveness is achieved by using a shock strategy of interlacing the effects of suggestiveness and defamiliarization (“ostranenie”), as well as through the expansion of the range of the viewer’s sensory perception and the effect of synesthesia. The suggestive impression effect is enhanced by visual poetic metaphors that reveal to the viewers the historically formed sensual imagery of Spanish mysticism. With the help of optical and light technologies, the semantic field of a film is not only visualized, but also illusively materialized as a three-dimensional image. НАУКА ТЕЛЕВИДЕНИЯ № 17.1, 2021 54 THE ART AND SCIENCE OF TELEVISION In general, the strategies reproduce the sensual immersiveness, which is inherent in the Spanish Catholic cultural experience. Such strategies block the viewers’ psychological distancing mechanisms and cause affective states and emotional involvement in the art spaces. Such technological innovations for creation of immersive spectacular audio-visual environments brought the J. Val del Omar’s cinema into the field of multi-media, and therefore he could rightfully be considered the forerunner of media art, the creator of art spaces, which later became known as sound and video installations.

THE VIRTUAL ARTIST. VOCALOID AND AN EXPERIMENT ON ITS PERCEPTION

Over the past decade the voice synthesiser Vocaloid has gained great popularity in Japan. Critics debate on whether Vocaloid can be called a new musical instrument and if its creation marks a new era in (Japanese) popular music. The unique characteristic of a Vocaloid is its Alter Ego, its “virtual shape”, which is illustrated like common anime or manga characters such as Sailor Moon or Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne, thus owning not just a name but also human-like features. It was due to the use of avatar images that Vocaloid managed to spread across the world via the internet. The most famous anthropomorphic singer is called Hatsune Miku and is known for her long turquoise-coloured hair tied up in two ponytails. Being the uncrowned princess of Nico Nico Douga—the Japanese equivalent of YouTube, Miku opened up the pathway for even more Vocaloids like Luka Megurine or Rin and Len Kagamine. The contiguity of the new creating type to the “screen arts” is maintained by its own existence in the sphere of digital media. This new phenomenon is not very known in Europe, so the question on the principles of its existence is a vital one to discuss. Furthermore, we shall test how its music and appearance are perceived by people who do not belong to the fandom. How does a Non-Japanese listener react to a musical performance done by a computer program? One of the first answers to this question can be found in a study, which was conducted at the Martin-Luther-University in Halle (Saale), Germany. It focused on the reactions of the listeners. Although Europeans do not show as much interest in artificial intelligence as the Japanese, the test subjects showed great sympathy towards the singing program. The essay’s content is divided into four parts. It begins with a contemplation of Vocaloids sociological aspects (1), followed by the introduction of a selfproduced classification of its performances (2) and continues with an explanation on how the experimental research was conducted (3). The last part contains a summarised presentation of the results and a perspective on future research (4). The authors claim this research to be one of the very first tries to shed light on how the popularity of this new musical phenomenon can be explained.

“ELECTRIC PROTO-PERFORMANCE”: ENIGMARELLE THE AUTOMATON AT THE 1938 EXPOSITION INTERNATIONALE DU SURRÉALISME

The following article is based on a report presented at the Arts and Machine Civilization International Scientific Conference. The author analyzes publications related to Enigmarelle and automata in periodicals of the early twentieth century in order to identify the significance of Enigmarelle’s phenomenon at the 1938 International Exhibition of Surrealism. In the course of the study, it was concluded that Enigmarelle became a centerpiece of the opening, a kind of a wobbler that was intended for attraction and intriguing the public. Enigmarelle is a documented curiosity of the early twentieth century, mystified in popular Parisian newspapers of the first half of the century. Initially, Enigmarelle was created only for the entertainment of the public, as the popularity of automaton resumed in connection with the dollomania in the second half of the 20th century. However, for the 1938 International Exhibition of Surrealism in Paris, the surrealists turned Enigmarelle the automaton into an exhibition object and shifted the emphasis of its function from entertaining to symbolic; as a result, the “mechanical human” became the image of an “ideal” person bringing danger and death. This change in the interpretation was facilitated by the hysteria, which is fundamentally significant for the surrealists’ work. Also, Enigmarelle’s paramount significance can be explained by a reference to its connection with Frankenstein. The automaton, a mechanism controlled by electricity, drew parallels with mesmeric practices, during which a body could be controlled by electric pulses. It can be concluded that surrealists turned the popular culture phenomenon, Enigmarelle the automaton, into an exhibit that correlated with the films of the 1920s and 1930s about the revivification and creation of an inanimate being (Frankenstein, 1931, Metropolis, 1927, The Golem: How He came into the World, 1920). Such a presentation was associated with mesmerism and hysteria, which was related to the ocularcentristic concept and surrealists’ pre-war mood. Based on the analysis of publications in periodicals, it can be assumed that Enigmarelle’s phenomenon anticipated viewers’ active involvedness. This, in turn, served as a kind of a binder, uniting the disparate elements of the exhibition.